


wait like the night (with starry vigil)

by leeloo6



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Consensual Non-Consent, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crying, Dom Aziraphale (Good Omens), Dom/sub, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Fluff galore, Light Bondage, M/M, Metaphysical Sex, Safeword Use, Sensory Deprivation, Sub Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:27:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27782959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leeloo6/pseuds/leeloo6
Summary: The aching tenderness in his blood fuses with something sharper, more familiar, as his own words take him by surprise. He didn’t mean to say this; what he meant to say is how incredibly happy he is to live in a post-apocalyptic world where he is allowed to touch Aziraphale, to wake up next to him, to watch TV and bicker and dine and fuck and have doing nothing feel like doing everything, only because they’re together. What he wants to say is,I’ve loved you for thousands of years, you idiot, and finally having the enormity of this with you brings me to my knees.Instead, he finds that what he wants to say and what wants to be said are two overlapping, but not entirely similar, constructs. This realization leaves his mouth slightly agape and his (still superfluous) heart in several- unseen before, therefore mildly upset at the lack of attention- tatters.Fuck.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 76
Collections: Top Aziraphale Recs





	wait like the night (with starry vigil)

**Author's Note:**

> Basically a 5000-word excuse to write angst, ethereal smut, and tooth-rotting fluff. I regret nothing. 
> 
> Title from Rabindranath Tagore's _Gitanjali_.
> 
> There is off-screen negotiation, and everyone consents. :D

Crowley opens his legs just a fraction of an inch further, tries to sculpt out a moment in the middle of the intractable whirlwind of sensation, a second to feel it all and preserve it for eternity. 

Eternity is very long.

He finds that he doesn’t mind that much anymore.

There’s a sharp bite at his shoulder, a brushing away of curls, a greedy inhale at the nape of his neck, and then he goes down. Metaphorically: thoughts of good and evil, meaning and lack thereof, subside under the gentle, firm hands of his devoted angel. Literally: he is being pressed into the mattress, a steady hand keeping his head in place, smothered into the silk-smooth darkness of the pillow. 

His breath (counterfeit, barely needed) is a pale impression against the silence brought on by the vast, empty space filling his bedroom walls. Too generous, this space, and he’s only now beginning to understand what he might’ve been saving it for- the reverberation of shallow breaths, the crude, all-too-human sounds of skin on skin, the fluttering and echo of angel wings, none of which have transpired yet in this suspended moment between surrender and pleasure.

Aziraphale traces the length of his spine with an energy-suffused fingertip. It burns, this reminder that he is not holy, and it makes him feel blessed nevertheless. He gasps against his better judgment, and the involuntary, shameful sound is met with a good-natured chuckle, almost vile in its detachment.

Crowley pushes his clothed hips up against the strong, full thighs that bracket them, and the act of disobedience is met with another crackle of light in his veins, a barely-perceptible flutter of wings in the ether surrounding them. 

“You love this,” he gasps. The need to feel more of this divine-clad sharpness on his skin, to safeguard the resulting marks days afterwards, burns low in his belly and extends to the tips of his toes. “Couldn’t openly disobey one single order in your angelic existence for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, and now, when you did, you can’t stop it, can you? You can’t turn it off. And you won’t stand for anyone else mirroring your betrayal.”

Another laugh, pure gold and sunlight melted into ice. “Dear soul, you- mirroring my betrayal- is the most delicious uprising I’ve ever had the pleasure to stifle,” Aziraphale says, twisting his hand into Crowley’s hair, not gently, to bring their mouths together. 

There is fire in the kiss, and steel, and a pure, vintage brand of- only a few months before, Crowley would've cringed at himself for thinking this- _love_. It's a paradoxical rush of toe-curling and pulse-steadying pleasure, against which Crowley sees no option but to squirm.

"Let me," Aziraphale whispers, spreading his fingers on the pale expanse of Crowley’s back, holding him down with a binding force unmatched by the gentleness of the touch. "It's hardly any use fighting it now, dear, after you've made it clear what you want."

"I'm a demon," Crowley hisses between his teeth, and keeps writhing, delighting in the feel of Aziraphale’s hard length against his backside. Aziraphale brushes his fingers downwards, starting with Crowley’s shoulders and stopping to grip his wrists with affected gentleness, pinning them on both sides of his head and draping himself over the demon, skin over skin, shelter for the storm. This could’ve been a miracle, Crowley thinks. Aziraphale doesn’t need to use touch to bind him- this is true in more ways than one-, but he always chooses it, his beloved hedonist. "There is use in fighting everything," he spits, driving his point with another well-intended, but entirely useless, full-body twitch.

“No,” Aziraphale states, firm, but far from unkind, directly into Crowley’s ear. His knees have made space between Crowley’s legs, forcing them further apart, and the pressure of his body draped over the demon’s is doing incredible (and incredibly frustrating) things to Crowley’s cock, now trapped between his body and the glossy, tar-black linen. “Not me. We will never be at war again, my love.”

The certainty and the warmth with which he says it, so at odds with the detached, teasingly cruel tone of his previous words, has an instant effect on Crowley. It pulls him back to earth, to his riotous heart, beating and beating still for the past six thousand years, even after clocks were invented and he no longer needed to keep a mental note of how long he’d been loving.

It breaks the spell of their game in an instant, a wave of warmth overwriting the need to be denied, taunted, kept at a distance and taken over. All those complicated desires, which he still has, and knows he will keep having, crumble and – unexplainably- amplify under Aziraphale’s unwavering voice.

_We will never be at war again._

There was, of course, a war that had started with a fall and hadn’t, in fact, ended with the almost-end of the world, but it wasn’t theirs anymore. There was the Agreement, with countless attempts to smudge the merciless black-and-white dichotomy of them into a more tolerable shade of gray, and there was its end, that day in the foyer when Aziraphale had given form to the doubts that had been plaguing him from the start.

The end of that Agreement had meant the start of _their side_ , but somewhere in between, there had been a leap over a chasm too deep to be overlooked, even if overlooking it had become Crowley’s specialty over the past months. He could see it now, tentatively, even beyond- or, perhaps, precisely because of- the steady anchor of his affection.

He doesn’t know if the angel had meant for those particular words to soften him into submission, but right now, they’re doing much more. It’s bliss and intoxication and heartbreak in one potent cocktail: _“We will never be at war again”_ , coming from the one who’s supported the illusion of this war for millennia, choosing his fear over Crowley’s devotion. 

Crowley’s limbs go soft beneath Aziraphale's touch, beneath the grounding pressure of his angelic- and oh-so-human- presence. No single atom in Crowley’s body is able to find further protest, real or imagined, against giving himself over- not only to his lover’s desire, as the steps prescribe, but to the depth of his own wounding and regeneration, two unavoidable side effects of the unbreakable bond between them.

And then, because there’s no possible way of burying all this emotion back in the tenebrous depths where it’s been dwelling, nor expressing it in the confines of their current encounter- “Nightingale.”

Instead of waiting for Aziraphale’s reaction, his unavoidable worry, guilt, and rumination at hearing their safeword- the second time they’ve ever needed it, the first time Crowley has-, the demon rolls them over, letting the tears cross the threshold of what’s strictly acceptable for a nether being (approximately zero, give and take those fabricated with the purpose of temptation) and pouring the shame and the relief of them into a deep, dirty kiss that both exposes and conceals his want.

He’s still wearing pants. Aziraphale is still wearing everything. Why is he still wearing _everything_?

“Crowley,” Aziraphale manages a muffled protest before the demon vanishes away his clothes, taking advantage of how the momentary confusion makes him lose touch with his powers. Skin; all of the skin that he wants to crawl under, to know exhaustively, to sink his teeth into with the utmost adoration. He moans into Aziraphale’s mouth, pressing their hips together, and if it comes out as a sob, well, no one from back home needs to know.

“Crowley!” the angel says, louder this time, his hands a sharp grip on the demon’s shoulders. Then, softer, pleading- “Darling. Please talk to me. Tell me what went wrong.” 

“Wrong? Nothing went wrong,” Crowley manages. He commends himself on managing not to sound completely wrecked. “I’m perfect, you’re perfect. Perfect angel. That’s a bit of a pleonasm, isn’t it? Anyway. Time to fuck me now.” He makes a point by diving in for another kiss and guiding Aziraphale’s hand between them, praying that the stupid, ridiculous, ridiculously careful angel understands what he needs, and gives it to him, _now_.

He doesn’t.

“Crowley, you’re crying,” Aziraphale pleads again, his eyes clouded with affectionate concern, his eyebrows taking one of the fastest routes to melting Crowley’s expendable heart: a frown of worry and kindness and perplexity at how utterly wrong the world is, sometimes, such as now, when a demon is weeping openly on top of him with desire still plainly readable in his energetic imprint like it’s etched in braille.

“You should definitely be taking it as a compliment,” Crowley manages before diving in again, but this time Aziraphale won’t have any of it; damn his carefulness, his infinitely frustrating angelic caution. He grabs Crowley’s shoulders, all strong hands and soft eyes, and doesn’t relent. 

“I’m not an idiot, Crowley. This is not _good_ crying, and you used our safeword. We can’t just… go on as if nothing happened!” His voice is rising in pitch, and his eyes are wide; he’s panicking. Crowley sighs, because if there’s another thing that melts his resolve in an instant, it’s to see Aziraphale go soft on him. He sits up in a cross-legged position, giving both of them space to breathe, and can’t help a small twitch of his mouth when the angel does the same, gesturing, out of habit, to smooth over invisible creases in the clothes he isn’t wearing. When he manages to catch himself right on time, throwing a half-second suspicious look in Crowley’s general direction to see if he noticed, Crowley can’t help a burst of raw, affectionate laughter escaping his throat. 

He is hopelessly, foolishly in love.

He is also just finding out that humans can, in fact, laugh and cry at the same time, and that it feels like a rollercoaster ride going simultaneously up and down -the same lack of control, the same total implausibility-, which is how Aziraphale must see it as well, from the mixture of disbelief and warm concern imprinted on his features.

“I did something wrong,” he states. 

“Oh, angel. You’ve always been good at doing the right thing, even when it was absolute slander,” Crowley replies, still smiling affectionately at his beloved, tears and all. He feels a little like he’s just drunk three bottles of Bordeaux and forgotten to sober up.

“You’re avoiding my question, Crowley,” the angel replies with fond exasperation.

“Can’t blame me, it was hardly a question. You did nothing wrong”, then, sensing that he’s missing something, and that he won’t be able to run from it forever, he takes a leap of faith; or, rather, the leap of faith takes itself by arranging the messy, affectionate ache in his chest into an (insufficient, traitorous, painful) string of words. “You did all the right things, but maybe, just maybe, you were a teensy bit late.” 

The aching tenderness in his blood fuses with something sharper, more familiar, as his own words take him by surprise. He didn’t mean to say this; what he meant to say is how incredibly happy he is to live in a post-apocalyptic world where he is allowed to touch Aziraphale, to wake up next to him, to watch TV and bicker and dine and fuck and have doing nothing feel like doing everything, only because they’re together. What he wants to say is, _I’ve loved you for thousands of years, you idiot, and finally having the enormity of this with you brings me to my knees._

Instead, he finds that what he wants to say and what wants to be said are two overlapping, but not entirely similar, constructs. This realization leaves his mouth slightly agape and his (still superfluous) heart in several- unseen before, therefore mildly upset at the lack of attention- tatters.

_Fuck._

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, and the gentleness overtaking his features only serves to spur Crowley on.

“Run away with me, no, noo, I’m too busy winning the favour of some shitty angels who, given the soonest occasion, would burn me to a crisp!”

“I didn’t…” Aziraphale starts, apologetically, but whatever he meant to say dies on his lips as he shifts closer to Crowley and runs his hands on the demon’s shoulders, neck, brushes the tears off his cheeks. Every touch feels like medicine. “I meant to say I didn’t care about the angels. I cared about God, and Her plan, and what I felt- very wrongly- was my role in it. But that doesn’t matter right now, does it? I hurt you.”

“ ‘ts fine, no big deal,” Crowley says, aiming for dismissive, but the effect is somewhat ruined by how he can’t help leaning into Aziraphale’s touch, nuzzling his hand like an affection-starved puppy- which is exactly how he would describe the current state of himself, if anyone were to ask. _So what?_ half of him replies in mutiny, unbothered by- even- this transgression.

“I’m sorry,” the angel whispers, his blue eyes a mirror of regret, and compassion- feelings Crowley has banished thousands of years ago, except he hasn’t, but he should’ve, so being looked at like this still feels a little like being dropped in a pot of boiling sulphur. He looks away. Looking away gives him nothing of what he actually needs, so he looks back.

“Don’t doubt, not for a second, Crowley, that my heart was in the right place. I’ve loved you from the very start,” Aziraphale continues, resting his forehead against Crowley’s. “I’ve been incredibly foolish, and afraid.”

“I know. I know,” Crowley repeats, seeking Aziraphale’s lips, his chin, only to make sure that every little part of him is still there, that he is allowed to touch, and that they have not, miraculously, reverted back to the bleak, loveless 14th century. “I seriously have no problem with it. Or thought I didn’t, until you started talking about the war. I hate wars, you know. Against my job description, yeah, but I really do, and I never felt like I was in one. With you, I mean.”

“I did,” Aziraphale admits, and he looks devastated. He closes his eyes, leaning forward and resting his forehead, once again, against Crowley’s. “Tell me what you need.”

“What I need?”

“To forgive me.”

Crowley opens his mouth to say that Aziraphale is being ridiculous, that Crowley is a demon and has no right to forgive, only to tempt and to punish, because he hasn’t been forgiven, himself, so how could he pass it on? He means to say that, if it was in his power to forgive ( _it might be_ , the ex-angel and gone-native parts of him interfere), he would’ve done it already, a hundred times over, and that Aziraphale’s regret is breaking his heart, so he should stop pouring ash on his head at once; but what he says instead, because he is, in fact, a demon, and he recognizes an opportunity when he sees it, is:

“You could, you know. Give me all of you.”

“All of me?” Aziraphale asks, opening his eyes in surprise.

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

“Surely you don’t mean…”

“Oh, I do.”

Taking Aziraphale by surprise is Crowley’s own brand of hedonism. His furrowed brows, the contrite look on his face (a professional bias, Crowley assumes), the way he slightly parts his lips in protest, all fueled by a wave of fierceness too precious for words- they all make Crowley giddy with affection, especially when he starts stumbling over his words.  


“We couldn’t possibly… remember Vassago and Nuriel? They were… they discorporated immediately, and then…”

“And then were sentenced to unimaginable torment by their respective head offices, I know,” Crowley rolls his eyes. “We don’t have head offices anymore, and we’ve already been in each other’s bodies.” The formulation lacks enough clarity. “When we switched.” Double entendre, still. “You get my point. My point is, if we were to discorporate, it would’ve already happened a long time ago. Those poor bastards didn’t get to practice like we did.”

“You might be right,” Aziraphale concedes, “but there is still a risk. Do you really want this?” he asks, pleadingly.

“More than anything, angel,” Crowley answers, and he means it. He’s thought about this ever since Aziraphale appeared in half-corporeal form in that little bar in Soho- well, leaving any pretenses behind, he’s thought about it since his heart started beating faster for Aziraphale, roughly six thousand years ago- and it’s a craving beyond lust, beyond human love. He’s a supernatural being, and the instinct to love supernaturally can’t be written out of his celestial- demonic- DNA, no matter how many bone-deep satisfying and infinitely varied ways of fucking he can think of. 

The instinct to merge with Aziraphale, beyond their corporalities; to feel his essence, to be blessed in that way. How blasphemous, he thinks, except that it’s _good_ , too- he means bad- because the dark core of _him_ would get to Aziraphale, as well, so it would be a tempting of sorts. A rising, and a fall.

If any of this falling and rising business meant anything anymore, which it doesn’t.

“Do _you_ want this?” he asks. 

“My dear, I’ve thought about it for centuries,” the angel admits, pouring a breath of relief and anticipation in his next kiss. There’s a flutter in the air, and when Crowley opens his eyes next, angel wings are caging him in, pearl-white and sovereign. The atmosphere in the room has shifted from neutrally charged to _alight_ , and, for one moment, Crowley feels like he’s in Heaven again; not the corporate-hell-Heaven, but the original one, the first prototype that God had come up with, milky-white and love-bright. The one he, as well, had been a part of, at the beginning.

He feels pure.

His chest is expanding, his fingertips and toes are buzzing with low-voltage electricity, and when he looks at Aziraphale’s radiant smile, warmth starts undulating at the core of him in stronger and stronger waves. It hurts, a little, until he realizes that it’s just his expectation for it to hurt, and that his own wings are unfolding from the ether, bringing more of his nature into this realm: scorching, prickling heat, tension bubbling at the surface of his skin, a restlessness that, he knows, lies at the very core of his passion.  


Aziraphale seems to feel it as well, because his expression shifts from watery-eyed bliss into covetous desire- neither of them unfamiliar, or anything less than beloved- and then back again as their wings find a natural way of overlapping, shielding both of them from the world.

“Yes,” Crowley groans, and when their mouths meet, his entire body- physical and beyond- flutters with lust and delight. He can feel both radiating off of Aziraphale’s skin and mixing with his own, ecstasy brought to its highest and lowest point at the same time; rapture and sin, heaven and hell, and it all feels superfluous in this moment that transcends all opposites. What surprises him- less than it probably should- is that he doesn’t feel more evil than pure, and that Aziraphale doesn’t feel more angel than demon as their energies are merging. They feel equal, and it’s difficult to tell whether they’ve always been, or if it’s an effect of their union.

It’s difficult, in fact, to tell if there has any been a moment in time before this one.

“My angel,” he opens his mouth to say, and finds himself speaking with Aziraphale’s voice instead, looking back at his own human form. The words and their meaning unmoor him, a blow to his very core, destabilizing him and opening him up to see, to really see; myriads of eyes blinking on his dark wings, mirrored by Aziraphale’s bright-blue ones until the seer becomes the seen, and up becomes down, and they find themselves pulled out of space and time to finally step home.

Aziraphale is pure light, speckled with tendrils of alluring darkness that Crowley realizes are his own, and his own are merging with coils of angelic warmth that are mottled with tendrils of darkness and so they spin on and on, because there is no longer a place where one ends and the other begins. It feels nothing like sauntering vaguely downwards, and everything like falling, in the best way possible: freely, lovingly, out of choice, and with the overwhelming certainty that he is being caught, again and again, in every iteration of this process, in every version of the universe there is.

It feels like love, devout and all-encompassing, less of a blaze and more of an enduring, warmth-giving flame that encircles both of them, no, is both of them, simultaneous with the gawping void beneath. And yes, there is a void beneath, buzzing vaguely at the edges of Crowley’s consciousness, and the more he thinks about it, the closer it seems to fall towards him; he tries to hold on to Aziraphale’s consciousness, but the very nature of consciousness doesn’t allow holding on to, so before he knows it they’re both slipping on nothingness and falling into it, pitch-black fear, purest Hell out of bounds.

It’s only fair, that there would be a piece of Hell in their union. There is no battle; this is the whole point, that Heaven is only made real by Hell, and evil can only exist in contrast with, and in completion of, good. _Love is the absence of fear_ , Crowley’s mind thinks, unable to remember which human had come up with this first, because he is currently spinning downwards, soul gripped by a terror only equaled by that of his first Fall. 

He loves, and he is still afraid.

Soon enough, he realizes that there is no impact, and there never will be. The whole point of fear is that there’s nowhere to land, only a perpetual state of uncertainty, an endless fall. Pits of boiling sulphur; the end of the world; the loss of innocence, and faith, and belonging; endless corridors of tedium and bureaucracy, and the voices inhabiting them, threatening him and his beloved to dissolution. Before their shadow can burn its way through his ethereal body, he thinks of Aziraphale, and the fears he must be facing now, alone even in their embrace. In retrospect, this whole metaphysical mating thing might’ve not been his best idea. 

As soon as he thinks this thought, he’s being pulled back to his body, a thousand miles per hour propelling his immortal soul back in the container he’d left behind. Aziraphale is looking back at him, eyes full to the brim with effortless affection, lips curled in a smile that seems to promise him the world- no, _more_ than that- even as tears flow unrestrained on his cheeks.

“Dear soul,” he says, as if in prayer, and the meaning beneath the words shines through every electrifying point where their bodies are meeting. Their wings are still out, and Crowley is silent, and keeps his watery eyes closed as he feels a new desire making its way through the mist of his consciousness. And because they’ve entered soul territory, where cause and effect are simple, straightforward, and indivisible in time, Crowley opens his eyes against soft, dark velvet on his next breath, and strains his arms to –quite uselessly- rattle the chains that are holding his wrists.

A breathless, wet laughter ghosts over his lips as Aziraphale’s skin slides over his.

“Sorry, this just…happened,” he mumbles apologetically. “Kinda ruined the mood, didn’t I?”

“I might be wrong, but I think we’ve entered a time loop where we’re co-creating,” Aziraphale replies, a little breathlessly, as he runs his hands down Crowley’s sides, caressing the expanse of his belly, his thighs, then running back up to his bound hands. The angel’s touch is fire leaving invisible trails of warmth on already-hot skin, and Crowley _wants_. “I’ve thought about this, too. I thought you might like it”, then, more quietly, “I felt your fear, as well, and your concern, and I wanted them to stop.”

“So, we’re in each other’s minds, then?” Crowley drawls, wishing he could touch, endlessly grateful that he can’t. The reprieve gives him space from his usual thoughts, the ever-grasping tendrils of his mind. “And we’ve both gone from ethereal to decadent in the span of an earthly minute. Can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Well, I hardly think there’s any need for that kind of distinction anymore,” Aziraphale murmurs, pressing a kiss in the center of Crowley’s stomach. The touch transports him right at the beginning of things, beyond good and evil, when they were all still a part of Her and Her tentative curiosity about a world of density, slowness, and infinite forms, and the potentiality therein. Against all probability, the ethereal cord connecting him to that source is still pulsing in faint spurs of light, something that he’s had the opportunity to feel only one- cross that, two- times, in rapid succession, since the Fall, and had fought to forget ever since.

“You’re a feast, laid out like this,” Aziraphale continues, making Crowley’s thoughts take a more profane turn as the angel inhales at the base of his cock, then plants decadent, open-mouthed kisses from the root of his length to the wet slit. It’s titillating, this merging of celestial energies- he can still feel the essence of them, twirling and entwining beyond the physical- and human bodies, double-edged pleasure, no route to escape from the overwhelming _rightness_ of it all. Every sensation is more than itself, every touch reverberates through the very core of him, a tantalizing mix of satisfaction and undefined desire. 

“I want more,” Crowley says, moving his hips in minute, undulating motions that he knows Aziraphale can ride without choking. His entire being seems to radiate warmth and kind of joy he hasn’t felt since before the Fall, inexplicably bringing the smell of rain in his nostrils and the taste of earth on his tongue. “This is brilliant, you’re brilliant, and I want more.”

“Oh, dear. I know exactly what you mean,” Aziraphale replies with nigh-palpable urgency, as if he’d been waiting for Crowley to ask. “Do you want to keep…?”

“Yeah. If you’re amenable. Feels good,” Crowley replies, opening his mouth to Aziraphale’s a moment before the angel’s lips touch his. The sensation of hard metal against his wrists grounds him. The temporary lack of vision allows his other senses to open up. Sight, Crowley had decided a while ago, was the most devilish sense, because it tempted humans to forget that there are other ways of taking the world in. Seeing a nice-looking body or a twenty-dollar bill or the latest trend in basically any human line of production tended to awaken the worst kinds of impulses in people, something that Crowley had certainly exploited in his career as a demon, but not always proudly. There was more harm, and value, to be found in other facets of human experience. For example, being tasted by the lavish swipe of Aziraphale’s tongue on his bottom lip, picking up the ethereal rustle of a minor miracle that allows his angel to easily slip two fingers inside of him, or feeling- with a sense he never knew he had- warm, binding affection surrounding him in waves. There are no wings unfolded in this realm, but Crowley can feel them, as sense memory and as parallel realities vibrating to indescribable speed beyond them. Aziraphale’s bright wings are embracing him, and his own are a canopy of sheltering darkness around the angel- if not in form, then in thought and heart as their bodies come together.

“I love the way you live out your pleasure,” Aziraphale whispers, and he sounds as overcome as the demon is by the bright, radiating stretch of his cock inside Crowley. “I can almost taste the purity of it. It used to amaze me, at first. Foolish me, I thought it shouldn’t be possible.”

Crowley laughs then, self-satisfaction melding with the lingering shadow of regret. Nostalgia, anguish, heartache: terribly human, after all, sins no better or worse than all others, but eclipsed, as it is, by the insistent pleasure gaining momentum in his every cell. “And I love how much of a bastard you can be in bed,” he replies light-heartedly, or at least as light-heartedly as he can while he’s being slowly fucked into- well, not oblivion, since this rather feels like the opposite of it. _Presence._ “Though that never came as a surprise.”

“Oh, didn’t it,” Aziraphale laughs, and the dear sound of it makes it imperative that Crowley sees his face, looks in his eyes, indulges in this bit of guileless greed as they start moving in tandem, so the blindfold passes into non-existence and the awaiting sight is even lovelier for its teasing tardiness: blue eyes still wet at the corners, dreamy gaze watered down with affection and just the slightest glint of mischief, pale arms bracketing his own and supporting the angel’s body weight as he moves in a gentle rhythm that would’ve normally been torturous, but right now is just about the perfect speed that Crowley needs to squeeze every last drop of pleasure from the moment. Aziraphale knows this, too, because what would sometimes be teasing from his part now feels like open-hearted, unrestrained _giving._

“Hello, there,” Aziraphale smiles, and Crowley turns his head to plant a soft kiss on the angel’s forearm.

“I love you,” he says as a way of greeting, feeling warm, undulating waves expand his chest even further as Aziraphale’s whispered answer rolls off of him in bright waves. He lets go, after that; not of Aziraphale’s gaze, because there’s nothing else to look at, and he wouldn’t for the life of him, even if there was; but of the demands of his own corporation, with its tendrils of pernicious thought and echoing malignance. 

“’twas a ruse”, he whispers against Aziraphale’s lips. The angel is pulling him off with slow, unrelenting strokes, and the pleasure keeps coiling between them as if one singular, unbreakable entity. “There’s nothing to forgive, and I- oh!- got over it ages ago. I just wanted you like this.”

“Oh, Crowley,” his angel replies with softness, strain, and something akin to compassion in his voice, even as his hand and his hips keep working their inexorable rhythm. “You have me, always.” The chains seem superfluous, then, so Crowley blinks them into non-existence and uses the next available seconds to get his hands on as much as Aziraphale’s skin as possible, reveling in the warm glow of his body, wrapping his legs and arms around him and pulling him deeper in until they collapse, one after the other, in sated bliss that rolls off them in waves long after their bodies have softened.

The sensation of being wrapped in an entirely invisible blanket of soft light, with just the right amount of pressure to keep him grounded, sticks with Crowley even after Aziraphale pulls his softened cock out of him. 

“I can still taste fire on my tongue,” Aziraphale replies when Crowley shares this with him. “I’ve never tasted fire before, but if I would, I’m quite certain this is how it would feel like.”

“What’s it like?” Crowley asks, leaning on one arm to face Aziraphale without even trying to disguise the dopey smile plastered on his face.

“It stings, a little,” the angel says, fixing his gaze somewhere above his head while he purses his lips, trying to catalogue the sensation. The unstudied loveliness of this gesture reminds Crowley that his ribs still seem to be the home of several coiling, blissed-out serpents singing quiet praise. He listens to them, and leans in to kiss Aziraphale on the lips. “It stings, but it’s strangely pleasant.” His eyes light up. “Like eating Pop Rocks.”

“Ooh, the 70s. I loved the 70s,” Crowley replies, miracling in a few of said candies in his mouth, then sticking his tongue out for Aziraphale to see. He can do these kinds of things, now, even if only for a little while, without thinking that someone (or a myriad of someones) is keeping a score of his miracle-to-wile ratio, and checking that he stays loyal to What He Is: a demon. A fallen angel. Unforgiven.

What he is, he finds, is in fact a much more relative construct than his mercurial mind had considered, even after he’d bent the rules to their breaking point. And, as Aziraphale laughs affectionately by his side, Crowley realizes- entirely in accord with Her ineffable plan, of course- that he’s never cared less about semantics.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make my heart sing. :D


End file.
